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A senior Microsoft executive, speaking exclusively to vnunet.com, has dismissed Linux&#39;s reputation as a secure platform as a "myth", claiming that the open source development process creates fundamental security problems.

Nick McGrath, head of platform strategy for Microsoft in the UK, said that the myths surrounding the open source operating system are rapidly being exploded, and that customers are dismissing Linux as too immature to cope with mission-critical computing.

"The biggest challenge we need to face centres on the myth and reality. There are lots of myths out there as to what Linux can do. One myth we see is that Linux is more secure than Windows. Another is that there are no viruses for Linux," said McGrath.

"Who is accountable for the security of the Linux kernel? Does Red Hat, for example, take responsibility? It cannot, as it does not produce the Linux kernel. It produces one distribution of Linux.

"In Microsoft&#39;s world customers are confidant that we take responsibility. They know that they will get their upgrades and patches."

McGrath went on to claim that another Linux myth centres on the number of open source developers who work to create the operating system.

"There a myth in the market that there are hundreds of thousands of people writing code for the Linux kernel. This is not the case; the number is hundreds, not thousands," he said.

"If you look at the number of people who contribute to the kernel tree, you see that a significant amount of the work is just done by a handful.

"There are very few of the improvements that come through the wider community. There are more skilled developers writing for the Microsoft platform than for open source.

"The way that 2004 started off there were a lot of myths in the marketplace around the cost and capability of Linux. But now a lot of the ideology has been replaced with commercial reality."

McGrath argued that recent growth in Linux deployments came largely at the expense of installed Unix systems, rather than replacement of Windows servers.

"We are increasingly seeing that the biggest challenges in the marketplace are less for Microsoft and more in the Unix space. Customers are moving away from Risc to Intel as the price performance ratio is compelling," he said.

"A lot of the percentage growth figures mask the fact that Linux is coming from a very small base. There are more Unix servers than Linux servers in the UK. There are more Windows servers than Linux servers in the UK."

The credibility of Linux in the enterprise is beginning to suffer, according to McGrath, as companies complete trials and find the platform wanting.

"A lot of customers have got trials and pilots of Linux, but are holding back Linux deployment into the mainstream because the operating system does not have the solution stack that they were expecting," he said.

"Most customers look for more than just a product from their vendors. They need a solution that comes with the appropriate levels of support and service. This is where Linux is becoming more challenged as people expect more from Linux.

"Linux is not ready for mission-critical computing. There are fundamental things missing. For example, there is no single development environment for Linux as there is for Microsoft, neither is there a single sign-on system.

"There are bits of the Linux software stack that are missing. These are factors that are holding back Linux."

IT WOULD seem Windows has become less attractive to the more affluent Asian countries.

According to a Japanese news report, the governments of Japan, S.Korea, and China are planning to co-develop an open-source operating system to replace the Microsoft operating system for large-scale use in their respective countries.

The initiative was said to bring the said countries together in the development of the software, as their technology bigwigs from private and government agencies were set to meet in late 2003 to discuss specifics of the collaboration.

Linux would thus be positioned at the core of the initiative and would be implemented in critical areas of business and government service networks. Previously, Linux only occupied marginal positions in the data center, particularly in non-critical file, print, and e-mail services.

The open-source software was virtually a non-entity in the mission-critical space in the Asian market, as database and transaction servers were considered largely dominated by Windows and Unix servers. According to a study conducted by the Framingham, Massachusetts-based International Data Corp., only about six percent of servers in the region have installed Linux as against the 50 percent of Windows.

This is due to the generally untested capacity of Linux in the enterprise in terms of reliability, scalability, and security. However, Oracle had claimed "unbreakable" capacity of its Linux software in which it had made mission-critical tasks and operations on the database. This provided the necessary spark for the eventual entry of Linux into more data centers, now highlighted by the reported Japan-Korea-China initiative.

According to the report published in the Japanese news daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the initiative was first discussed in a conference of over a hundred software engineers from the three Asian countries in Thailand last March.

The initiative was strengthened by the fact that Japan, Korea, and China have active developer communities for the Linux platform, particularly in the embedded Linux area, in which the software is integrated in home appliances and industrial equipment.
With the countries? governments pledging to support open-source, citing security and cost issues in available commercial software, it would not be long before Linux would have made a significant push into the Asian enterprise market, thanks to the reported three-nation initiative.
?2003 www.inq7.net all rights reserved

The two governmental departments will cooperate in developing a platform, based on Linux, able to be applied under various environments, such as personal computer, server and personal digital assistant.

The system will support online service and communication application software.

Sources say, Lixun has been developing very fast in France in recent years. In the second quarter of 2004, China&#39;s market of platform software also witnessed a high growth rate, with an aggregate of 2.701 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 29.9 percent.

In terms of the product mix, Linux has become the focus of the market with a year-on-year growth of 72.1 percent, and also 20.5 percent up from the previous statistical period.

Linux still holds a market share as high as 60 percent among governments and large enterprises while in the meantime penetrates into small and medium-sized enterprises at a year-on-year growth rate of 74.4 percent.